Why haven't the Electoral Commission made a public statement or even a tweet on the fact that lots of people have been removed from the register due to "technical problems"? We really need to have a close eye on them. https://www.electoralcommission.ie/who-we-are/members-of-the-commission/

I'd like to vote as an anonymous person with no address please....

We need autistic software engineers sitting on the board of the Electoral Commission, not political hacks, barristers and NGO people.

I have a really really bad feeling about this.Their body language says it all. It would be perfectly fine to admit there have been technical issues that have been resolved .. but they gave no real answers. Look how that woman is nervously flailing around the place nodding in agreement with whatever bullshit the people to the left or the right are spouting. "Sure I'm on the register as Tim but if I had typed in Timothy I wouldn't show up". It's a just a list of names in a database. That's all it is. It could not be simpler. Even your local camogie club manages a similar system for its under-14 team members. Let's not forget, we are the European headquarters for numerous major tech companies. The notion of a "backlog" spanning several days in some counties, as suggested by some on Twitter, for being added to a glorified Excel spreadsheet, especially in the heart of Europe's Silicon Valley, seems ... Weird. https://youtu.be/7Z6Dx8_mYTU

- Who performed the modernization of the electoral register and when was the work completed?
- Was this task undertaken by engineers within the Local Government Management Agency (LGMA) or outsourced to a third-party software company?
- If outsourced, can details of the e-tender issued by the LGMA for this work be provided?
- What tests were conducted on the system before its deployment?
- What standards did the commission recommend and set for the update and maintaince of this new modernised electoral system? - it's clearly outlined as one of the commission's new responsibilities
- If the LGMA developed and now manages the new system on behalf of the Local Authorities, and the commission was responsible for recommendations on its update and maintenance, why is the commission directing voters with issues, such as being removed from the register to the Local Authorities?

A few more questions to consider..

- What was the design of the old electoral system?
- What specific changes or upgrades have been made in the new system? Where are they clearly documented?
- Was the update to the electoral system a migration or upgrade from the old system, or was it a complete redesign?
- What technical recommendations were given by the commission regarding the design and testing of the new system?
- Is the design of the electoral system uniform across all counties?
- Does the local government management agency centrally store electoral system information, or is data stored independently in each county? Additionally, who has access to this data in each county?
- Is there any publicly available documentation on the design and testing of this electoral system?
- Who is responsible for carrying out upgrades of the system: the local authorities or a central authority in Dublin? Who has access to manage these upgrades?
- What is the technical reason that person might have been purged from the register?
- Is there an audit trail for purging of people from the register?

The Department of Children have released their purchase orders over 20k for Q3 of 2023. I'll get this into CSV/Excel for you tomorrow. This contains IPAS and Ukrainian contract payments.